Warcradle Studios Diary #27

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We announced Lost World Exodus this time last year and since then we have had releases of a number of products bearing the logo of Wild West Exodus’ forthcoming sibling. Naturally many of you are eager to know what 2020 holds in store for your Dystopian Age adventures in the Lost World of Antarctica.

The icy windswept coast of Antarctica gives way to temperate jungles, valleys rich in minerals, titanic plants and the cries of strange creatures unlike anything seen elsewhere in the world. The reason for this incredible changed landscape is buried deep within the heart of this Lost World. The wreckage of an alien craft, lying dormant and waiting to reveal its secrets to humanity.

“It is Hard to Fail, But it is Worse Never to Have Tried to Succeed” - Theodore Roosevelt

As we have mentioned in an earlier diary, global health concerns mean we are facing a lengthy disruption to our plans for releasing Dystopian Wars. This, in turn, has a knock-on effect on the launch of other games from Warcradle Studios. That said, for Lost World Exodus (LWX) we always intended to launch the game slightly differently than we have for our other games because of the size and scope needed.

Lost World Exodus features eight factions each with forces comprising of multiple detachments of units. While Wild West Exodus (WWX) has a greater focus on characters and individual heroics, LWX leans more into an experience featuring ranks of disciplined troops supported by specialist weapon teams and vehicles.

A great number of units for LWX can be used in WWX as well because the games share a number of core rules and allow interplay between their factions. Because of this, the release schedule for LWX is designed to ensure players have as full an experience as possible when the game is finally launched.

A number of current (and future) products bearing the logo of Lost World Exodus!

We have already released a number of units and boxed sets in the Lost World Exodus range. These Detachments and characters are perfect for use with Wild West Exodus while also preparing the ground for a very exciting future!

Throughout 2020 we will continue to release LWX branded sets so that when the Gubbins and Rules for Lost World Exodus are released next year, players will have a wide range of products to build their forces with as they battle across the changing landscape of Antarctica to seize the riches of this Lost World for themselves.

One of the forthcoming releases that’s sure to be seen on a lot of tables is something very special indeed, our 2020 Promotional Miniature!

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

- Theodore Roosevelt - Lost World Explorer

There’s something comfortingly Dystopian Age about Theodore Roosevelt riding a giant lizard creature and serving as a Major in the Union army. Each of the Promotional Miniatures has summed up an important chapter in the Dystopian Age.Legendary Rani Nimue heralded the launch of Wild West Exodus, the first instalment in this expanding universe. 2018’s Nakano Gozen showed that there was a wider Dystopian Age still very much unexplored. 2019’s miniature, Jadzia Kosciuszko announced in spectacular fashion that Lost World Exodus was coming. Now we have the 2020 Promotional Miniature - Theodore Roosevelt, Lost World Explorer.

Roosevelt encapsulates everything distinctive about the Dystopian Age and Lost World Exodus in particular. He’s an instantly recognisable character to so many, yet here he is depicted in a new and unfamiliar way. The 187X of the Dystopian Age is not the same as the 1870’s of our own history. The world of this Theodore Roosevelt is precariously balanced on the edge of a terrifying new age of unearthly technology and industrial empires. But Roosevelt is a man of vision and determination. He is a hero to the Union and lends his aid where he is needed most. Oh and to top it off, he’s riding a creature that looks very much like a dinosaur!

So who is Theodore Roosevelt in the Dystopian Age?

Born in 1854, Theodore Roosevelt was somewhat of a sickly child. To the young Teddy, as his parents called him, his weak constitution was something that needed to be challenged and overcome. In the aftermath of the Ore War, Roosevelt applied himself to a life of service, joining the Union military at seventeen. It was there that his exuberant personality, keen and varied interests, and robust masculinity quickly made him a favourite amongst the men and women he served alongside. Roosevelt was deployed to fight against Latin Alliance insurgents in Cuba as part of 273rd Cavalry Regiment, in a platoon known as the Rough Riders.

Roosevelt’s success with the Rough Riders saw him promoted to First Lieutenant and platoon leader under Colonel Leonard Wood. Three years later, Roosevelt was a Major when the Rough Riders were deployed to Antarctica as part of the 12th Expeditionary Force.

After the Union was defeated at Shirase Valley by a Japanese detachment, With their horses maimed or killed in the clash, Roosevelt provided an ingenious solution. He had studied the attempts by expeditions to domesticate a native saurian species know as Trodon. He agreed they would be suitable mounts for his cavalry and put his Rough Riders to the challenge. After several months of wrangling, Roosevelt led his first detachment of Trodon cavalry to repel a small skirmishing force of Canadian Blackhoofs that were attempting to break through to the Ross Ice Shelf.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” - Major Roosevelt at the Battle of Mount Erebus.

After several small victories elsewhere, the battle of Terra Nova was a turning point for the Rough Riders and their Commander. Roosevelt led his Trodon mounted cavalry in a brilliant counter-offensive, disrupting supply lines and weakening the Celestian Empire’s gains elsewhere in the region. An avid writer, Roosevelt’s journals were seen as fit for publication by the army and soon Roosevelt was lauded a hero back home in the Union. Having been impressed with the lurid tales of the Rough Rider’s exploits and seeing the political capital to be made in the matter, President Andrew Johnson declared a both an Island in New York and one in Antarctica to thereafter both be known as Roosevelt Island in his honour.

The battle of Mount Erebus proved that even a legend like Roosevelt was not infallible. Leading his Rough Riders as the spearhead for an assault by dozens of Union detachments, Roosevelt found that unexpected magma floes and bombardment by Crown icebreakers in the Ross Ice Shelf caused his force to be cut off from the main body of the Union advance. Facing a gunline of entrenched Crown marines ahead of him, Roosevelt refused to yield. Issuing a stirring speech to the men and women under his command, Roosevelt led the charge. His self-belief and determination to overcome any obstacle, dismissed as bloody-minded hubris by Commodore Wilkes in his later report, was not enough. The Rough Riders were slaughtered by the disciplined fire from the British. Roosevelt himself was carried from the field, one of only seventeen Rough Riders to survive that day.

Returning to his home in New York, Roosevelt convalesced and married socialite Alice Lee. Despite surviving a court-martial for his role in the defeat at Mount Erebus, Roosevelt was disillusioned and considered resigning his commission. It was at Alice’s encouragement that Roosevelt pledged himself to some form of wider public service to the Union. He briefly considered a political career before settling on the idea of founding a volunteer cavalry corps. Initially training and deploying in the Badlands of North Dakota, this 1st Union of Federated States Volunteer Cavalry naturally became known as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Training at Roosevelt’s Trodon ranch in North Dakota, the outfit attracted an eclectic mix of Ivy League athletes, ballerinas, glee club singers, retired Rangers, naturalists, conspiracy theorists and Native Americans. This odd mixture of passions and talents were soon disciplined into a regiment that proved a worthy successor to the original Rough Riders and they saw deployment from the Dakotas to Arizona and Montana. It was with these volunteers that Roosevelt made history when he deployed Trodon cavalry in an attack to reclaim Tombstone from the renegade Enlightened warlord, Kyle the Black. But that is a story for another time…

The 2020 Promotional Miniature: Theodore Roosevelt - Lost World Explorer, is available to purchase from the 26th March 2020 at www.wildwestexodus.com The miniature will remain available to purchase online until the end of the next show that Warcradle Studios attends. At the moment that looks like GenCon 2020 in Indianapolis, ending on the 2nd of August.